Moral lapses of local early German ministers, Part 2

2nd of 2 parts During the early colonial days, the Pennsylvania wilderness was no place for the dainty. Successful Lutheran and Reformed ministers who enjoyed an upper-class life in the Germanic provinces usually did not come here. As noted last week, those that did emigrate often fled or were “exiled” to the new land. Once here, they sometimes continued the unseemly traits that troubled their earlier careers.

When Henry Melchior Muhlenberg arrived late in 1742 he found the three congregations of which he was to assume charge, Philadelphia, Providence (Trappe), and New Hanover to be under the control of pastor John Casper Stover. Stover had arrived as a “theology student” in 1728 and was subsequently ordained at Trappe. The two men formed an immediate dislike for each other as Rev. Muhlenberg finally wrested the congregations away from Stover who moved westward to the Lancaster area.

Stover was apparently a two-fisted minister who became a farmer, miller, town proprietor and man of substance. He ministered successfully to congregations over a wide area. Muhlenberg complained that Stover’s public drunkenness and “ungodly” style of life gave Christopher Sauer, the Germantown newspaper publisher, “a great deal of fun.” Sauer, who disliked church ministers, published as many examples of their misbehavior as he could find.

Sauer, in his widely circulated German language newspaper, depicted the church people in New Hanover as pigs during the Rev. John Ludwig Voigt (Focht) trouble. During the 1760s and 1770s Rev. Voigt kept in his house several “housekeepers.” Muhlenberg supported Voigt but considered his friend “quite imprudent” in employing what he called a “household of young wenches.” Some church members boycotted the New Hanover Lutheran Church refusing to attend or contribute. Rev. Voigt, for his part, opined that whomever he employed as housekeepers was none of the congregation’s business. Muhlenberg arranged a marriage for Voigt in 1777 which seemed to settle the matter.

Little publicized was the case of Michael Schlatter whom Dutch church officials sent to Pennsylvania in 1746 in order to survey and report on the conditions of the Reformed congregations there and to organize them into an administrative body. Unknown to the church officials until after he had sailed was that Schlatter was “getting out of town” in a hurry as he fled the Swiss parish where he was the vicar, and more particularly he fled the married daughter of the senior pastor there with whom he was having an adulterous affair. She had a child which was supposed to have been his. He tried to persuade her to say that she had been raped by soldiers, but she would have none of it. Shortly thereafter he volunteered for service in Pennsylvania. While in Philadelphia, “he was accused of having tried to seduce the wife of one of his hosts and of having commented that adultery was not really sinful.”

Schlatter, it must be noted, was successful in his mission as he traveled throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Shenandoah Valley preaching and administering the sacraments. In 1751 he returned to Europe and returned with six ordained ministers, books, and money. He subsequently and successfully organized the German Reformed Church in America which today is part of the United Church of Christ or U.C.C.

There was, however, one pastor who was criminally charged and sentenced to 15 years solitary confinement at hard labor in the Eastern State Penitentiary. Rev. Henry Wendt was a native of Germany and came to Pennsylvania in 1858 taking as his charge the Lutheran churches in New Hanover, Keeler’s, Boyertown, Hill Church, and Sassamansville. He was married with six children. He left this area in 1865 and became Superintendent of the Orphans’ Asylum near Germantown. There were many orphans of deceased Civil War soldiers housed there.

The annual report (1867) of the president of the synod noted that “strange and shocking reports concerning his [Wendt’s] conduct as superintendent of the home” had reached his office. Wendt was, in the language of the day, accused of “tampering with the children entrusted to his care” and “debauching two and tending to debauch many more.” He was arrested and charged with rape, assault and battery with attempt to commit rape, and assault and battery. Several witnesses were called and he was found guilty. The judge in his sentencing address called the crime “one of extraordinary atrocity” and sentenced Wendt accordingly.

But Wendt was the exception. Few of these early ministers were reprobates; most came here as missionaries to the wilderness and did the best they could with their personal resources.